Coldheart Canyon: A Hollywood Ghost Story

EIGHT

At the bottom of the stairs Tammy discovered that the entire sub-structure of the house—the floor once occupied by the Devil's Country—was now reduced to heaps of rubble, with a few support pillars here and there, which were presumably the only things keeping the house from collapsing upon itself completely. Seeing the tenuous state of things, Tammy was tempted to go straight back upstairs to warn Maxine, but then she figured that there was probably no tearing urgency. The house had managed to stay upright in the weeks since the ghosts had wreaked this havoc, and wasn't likely to collapse in the next five minutes: she would risk looking around for a little while, just to be sure she'd understood as much of this mystery as was comprehensible before she turned her back on it forever.

The last few steps of the stairway had been torn away by the revenants' assault, but there was a heap of its own rubble directly beneath it, so it wasn't much of a leap for her. Even so, she landed awkwardly, and slid gracelessly down the side of the heap, puncturing her ankles and calves on the corners of the shattered tiles.

She stumbled away from the bottom of the stairs and through the doorway, the naked framework of which was still standing, surprisingly enough, though the walls to the right and left of it were virtually demolished, and the ceiling brought down, exposing a network of pipes and cables. There was very little light, beyond the patch in which she stood, which had leaked in from the turret. Otherwise, it was murky in every direction. She strayed a little distance from the doorway, taking care not to hobble herself on a larger piece of masonry, and careful too not to lose her bearings.

Every now and again something on a higher floor would creak or grind, or somewhere in the darkness around her she'd hear a patter of dry plaster-dust. Then the creaking would stop, the pattering would stop, and her heart would pick up its normal rhythm again.

Of one thing she was pretty certain: there were no ghosts here. They'd wreaked their comprehensive havoc and gone on their melancholy way, leaving the house to creak and settle and eventually, when it could no longer support its own weight, collapse.

She'd seen enough. She moved back to the doorway and returned through it to the stairs, climbing over the rubble onto the lowest step. The staircase swayed ominously as she heaved herself onto it, and she saw that it had become disconnected from the wall a few feet up and was therefore "floating," a fact she had failed to grasp during her descent. She ascended with a good deal more caution and reached the relatively solid ground at the top of the stairs with an inwardly spoken word of thanks.

The door to the master bedroom was open, she saw. A moment later, Maxine emerged and beckoned her to come up.

"Todd's here and he wants to see you," she explained.

"Is he all right?" Tammy asked, fully realizing, even as she said this, that it was a damn-fool question to ask about a man who'd been recently murdered.

By way of reply Maxine made a strange face, as though she didn't have the least clue what the man in the master bedroom was up to.

"You should just come up and see for yourself," she said.

As they crossed on the stairs Maxine took the opportunity to whisper: "I hope to hell you can make more sense of him than I could."

"Hello, Tammy."

Todd was lying in the bed, with a pile of dirt covering his lower half. There was dirt on the floor too; and on his hands.

"You're a mess," she remarked brightly.

"I've been playing in the mud."

"Can I open the drapes a little, or put on a lamp? It's really gloomy in here."

"Put on a lamp if you really must."

She went to the table in the corner and switched on the antiquated lamp, doing so tentatively given her problem with the electricity on the lower floor. Then she went to look out of the narrow gap between the drapes. Maxine had been right; the evening was coming on quickly. Already the opposite side of the Canyon was purple-gray, and the sky above it had lost all its warmth. There were no stars yet, but the moon was rising in the north-eastern corner of the Canyon.

"Don't look out there," Todd said.

"Why not?"

"Just close the drapes. Please."

She obviously wasn't quite quick enough for him, because he sprang out of bed, scattering dirt far and wide. His sudden movement startled her a little. It wasn't that she was afraid of him exactly; but if death emphasized people's natural propensities, as it seemed it did, then there was a good chance he'd be wilder in death than he had been alive. He took the drape from her hand—snatched it, almost—and pulled it closed.

"I don't want to see what's out there," he said. "And neither do you."

She looked down at his groin. How could she help herself? He was as hard as any man she'd laid eyes on, his dick moving even though he was standing still, bobbing to the rhythm of his pulse.

It would be ridiculous, she thought, not to mention it. Like his standing there with a pig under his arm, and making no reference to that.

"What's that in honor of?" she said, pointing down at the pulsing length. "Me?"

"Why, would you like it?"

"It's covered in dirt."

"Yeah." He took hold of the lower four inches of his dick and began to brush the soil off the top four, twisting his dick round (in a manner that looked painful to Tammy) so that he could fetch out the particles of dirt in the ridges of his circumcision scar.

"I didn't think I'd see you again," he said, as he worked. He let his dick go. It thumped against his belly before settling back into its head-high position. "I was beginning to think this was my only friend," he said. He knocked his dick sideways with a little laugh.

"I'm sorry," Tammy said. "I wasn't feeling well enough to come before now."

Todd wandered back over to the bed and sat down on the edge of the mattress. More dirt fell onto the floor. He folded his arms, bunching the muscles of his shoulders and chest.

"Are you mad at me?" she said.

"A little, I guess."

"Because I didn't visit?"

"Yeah."

"I wouldn't have made very good company. I thought I was going crazy."

"You did?" He was interested now. "What happened?"

"I locked myself up in my house. I wouldn't see anybody. I was just about ready to kill myself."

"Oh shit," he said. "There's no reason to do that. All the bad times are over, Tammy. You can go off and live your life."

"What life? I don't have a life," she sighed. "Just that stupid little home filled with Todd Pickett memorabilia."

"You could sell it all."

"I'm going to, trust me. Maybe take a cruise around the world."

"Or better still, stay up here with me."

"I don't think—"

"I mean it. Stay here."

"Have you been downstairs?"

"Not recently. Why?"

"Because this house is going to fall down, Todd. Very soon."

"No it isn't," he said. "Did you know there are dozens of small earthquakes in California every day? Well there are. And this place is still standing."

"It doesn't have any bottom floor left, Todd. Katya's guests dug it all up."

He turned to the bed, and started to pull armfuls of the dirt off the sheet.

"What are you doing?"

"Persuading you to stay," he said, still pulling at the earth. When he had almost all the dirt removed from the bed he pulled the sheet out and went around the other side of the bed, throwing the corners of the sheet into the middle, and then bundling up both sheet and dirt. He pushed the bundle off the bed, and got up onto the clean mattress, sitting with his head against the board, and his legs crossed. His balls were tight and shiny. His dick was hard as ever. He gave her a lascivious grin.

"Climb aboard," he said.

Here, she thought, was an invitation in a million. And there would have been a time, no doubt, when she would have swooned at the very idea of it.

"I think you should cover yourself up," Tammy said, keeping the tone friendly, but firm. "Haven't you got a pair of pants you can wear?"

"You don't want this?" he said, running his fingers over the smooth head of his cock.

"No," she said. "Thank you."

"It's because I'm dead, isn't it?"

She didn't reply to him. Instead she wandered through to the closet— which was enormous; barely a tenth of it was filled—and started to go through the trousers and jeans on the hangers, and found an old, much-patched pair of jeans, their condition suggesting that he was fond of them, because he'd had them fixed so often.

As she pulled them off the hanger she heard a sound on the roof, like something scraping over the Spanish tiles.

"Did you hear that?" she called through to Todd.

There was no answer from the room next door. Bringing the jeans with her, she made her way back into the bedroom. Todd was no longer on the bed. He had snatched the dirt-stained sheet up off the floor and had wrapped it haphazardly around his body, the result being something between a toga and a shroud, and was now crawling around in the corner of the room in this bizarre costume, his eyes turned up toward the roof. He beckoned Tammy over, putting his forefinger to his lips to ensure her silence. There were more noises on the roof; scraping sounds that suggested the animal, whatever it was, had some considerable bulk.

"What is it?" she said. "That's not a bird."

He shook his head, still staring up at the ceiling.

"What then?"

"I can't see what it is, it's too bright."

"Oh so you have looked."

"Yes of course I've looked," he said, very softly. "Shit, this always happens. It's like they're its chorus."

He was referring to the coyotes, which had begun a steady round of almost panicked yelpings from the other side of the Canyon. "Whenever the light appears, the damn coyotes start up."

He had begun to shudder. Not from the cold, Tammy thought, but from fear. It crossed her mind that this was very far from the conventional image of ghost-hunting. The phantom naked and afraid; her proffering a pair of jeans to cover him up.

"It's come here for me," Todd said, very quietly. "You know that."

"How can you be sure?"

"Because I can feel it. In my chest. And in my balls. The first time it came here it actually got into the house. I was asleep, and I woke up with this terrible ache in my balls. And that"—he pointed down between his legs—"was so hard it hurt. I was terrified. But I yelled at it to go away, and off it went. I think I must have startled it."

"How many times has it been back since that first time?"

"Six or seven. No, more. Nine, ten times. Sometimes it just waits in the garden. Sometimes it sits on the roof, like it is now. And then once it was in the pool."

"There's no water in the pool."

"No, I know. It was lying at the bottom, not moving."

"And you couldn't see any shape in it?"

"No, no shape. I mean, do angels even have shapes?"

"An angel? That's what you think it is?"

"I'm pretty sure. I mean, it came to get me. And I am dead. So that's why it's hanging around. And it almost had me once—"

"What happened?"

"I looked at it. And my head started to fill up with all these memories. Things I hadn't thought about for years and years, literally. Me and Donnie as kids. Cincinnati. Nothing important. Just things you might think of in a daydream. And it said to me—"

"Wait. It speaks? This thing speaks?"

"Yes. It speaks."

"What sex is it?"

"I don't know. Sometimes it sounds more like a guy . . ." He shrugged. "I don't know."

"I'm sorry. I interrupted you. What did it say?"

"Oh. It said: all this is waiting for you."

" All this,' meaning what?"

"All the memories, I suppose. My past. People. Places. Smells. You know how sometimes you wake up from a dream and it's been so real, so strong, everything in the real world seems a bit unconvincing for the first half-hour? Well, it was like that after I saw the memories. Nothing was quite real."

"So why the hell are you fighting it? It doesn't want to hurt you."

"I'll tell you why I'm fighting. Because it's a one-way street, Tammy. I go with the light, there's no way back."

"And is being here so wonderful?"

"Now don't—"

"I mean it."

"Don't argue with me," he said. "I've thought about this a lot. Believe me. It's all I've thought about."

"So what do you want to do?"

"I want you to stay right here with me until the damn thing goes away. It won't try any tricks if you're here."

"You mean giving you the memories?"

"It's got others. Once it appeared on the lawn looking like Patricia, my mother. I knew it wasn't really her, but it's crafty that way. You know, she was telling me to come with her, and for just a few seconds—"

"It had you fooled?"

"Yeah. Not for long, but. . . yeah."

At this juncture there was a rapping sound on the door. Todd jumped.

"It's only Maxine," Tammy said, getting up, and turning from Todd. He caught hold of the jeans she was carrying, not because he wanted to wear them but to stop her escaping him.

"Don't answer it," he said. "Please stay here with me. I'm begging you, stay: please."

She held her breath for a moment, listening for the presence on the roof. It was no longer audible. Had the creature—whatever it was—simply departed, or was it still squatting up there, biding its time? Or—a third possibility, just as plausible as the other two—was she falling for some fictional fear that Todd, in his confused, post-mortem state, had simply created out of thin air? Was she just hearing birds on the roof, skittering around, and letting his imagination work her up into a frenzy about it?

"Put your jeans on," she said to him, letting go of them.

"Tammy. Listen to me—"

"I am listening," she said, crossing to the door of the bedroom. "Put your jeans on."

She heard the rapping sound again. This time she thought perhaps she'd been wrong. It wasn't Maxine at all. It was somebody outside the house beating on the front door.

She went to the bedroom door and cautiously opened it. She was in time to see Maxine retreating across the hallway from the front door.

"What is it?" she whispered. Maxine looked up at her; by the expression on her face something had unsettled her. "I heard this knocking.

Went to the door. And, Tammy, there was a light out there, shining in through the cracks in the door."

"So he's not having delusions," Tammy said.

She headed downstairs to comfort Maxine. As she did so she reported what she'd just heard Todd tell her. "Todd said there was something out there waiting for him. That's his turn of phrase: waiting for him. Apparently it sits on the roof a lot." She put her hand on Maxine's trembling shoulder. "Are you okay?"

"I am now. It just freaked me out."

"So you didn't open the door?"

"Well you can't open it, can you? It's cracked. But it's not much protection."

"Stay here."

So saying, Tammy crossed the hallway, gingerly slid through the broken door and stepped out onto the doorstep.

"Oh Jesus, be careful," Maxine murmured.

"There's nothing," she said.

"Are you sure?"

Maxine stepped out through the cracked door and they stood together on the step.

The last light of the afternoon had by now died away; but the moon had risen and was shedding its brightness through the trees to the right of the front door.

"Well, at least it's a beautiful evening," Maxine remarked, staring up at the light coming between the branches.

Tammy's thoughts were elsewhere. She stepped out of the house and onto the pathway. Then she turned around, running her gaze back and forth along the roof, looking for some sign, any sign whatsoever, of the creature that had made the noise up there. As far as she could see, the roof was completely deserted.

"Nothing," she said to herself.

She glanced back at Maxine, who was still staring up at the moon. She was alarmed to see that the sight of the moonlight seemed to have brought Maxine to tears.

"What's wrong?" she said.

Maxine didn't reply. She simply stared slackly up at the tree.

A few leaves fluttered down from the branches where the moonlight was sourced, and to Tammy's amazement the light began to slowly descend.

"Oh fuck," Tammy said very softly, realizing that this was not the moon.

Todd had been right. There was some entity here, its outer form consisting of raw light, its core unreadable. Whatever it looked like, it apparently had eyes, because it could see them clearly; Tammy had no doubt of that. She felt its scrutiny upon her. Not just upon her, in fact, in her. She was entirely transparent to it; or so she felt.

And as its study pierced her, she felt it ignite other images in her mind's eye. The house on Monarch Street where she was born appeared in front of her, its presence not insistent enough to blot out the world in which she was standing, but co-existing with it, neither sight seeming to sit uncomfortably beside the other. The door of the Monarch Street house opened, and her Aunt Jessica, her father's sister, came out onto the stoop. Aunt Jessica, of all people, whom she hadn't thought about in a very long time. Jessica the spinster aunt, smiling in the sunshine, and beckoning to her out of the past.

Not just beckoning, speaking.

"Your papa's at the fire station," she said. "Come on in now, Tammy. Come on in now."

She'd not liked Aunt Jessica over-much, nor had she had any great fear of her father. The fact that Aunt Jessica was there on the stoop was unremarkable; she used to come over for supper on every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, often taking care of Tammy and her brothers when Tammy's parents went out to see a movie or go dancing, which they'd liked to do. Even the line about Papa being at the fire station carried no especial weight. Papa was always at the fire station for one thing or another, because he wasn't just a fireman, he was the union organizer, and a fierce advocate for better pay and conditions. So there had always been meetings and discussions, besides his diurnal duties.

In short, the memory carried no particular measure of significance, except for the fact that it was a memory of hers, and that somehow this creature—angel or whatever it was—had got into her head to set it in motion. Was its purpose that of distraction? Perhaps so; being so perfectly commonplace. Tammy could slip into its embrace without protest, because it evoked neither great joy nor great regret. It was just the past, there in front of her: momentarily real.

She thought of what Todd had said, about how the angel had appeared as his mother. Somehow the way Todd had described the process it had sounded altogether more sinister than this: more like a trap for his soul.

"Tammy?"

"Yes, I see it," she said to Maxine.

"What do you see?" Maxine said.

"It's just my Aunt Jessica—"

"Well if I were you I'd look away," Maxine advised. Tammy didn't see why it was so important that she look away.

"I'm okay, just watching," she said.

But Maxine had taken hold of her arm, and was gripping it so hard that it hurt. She wanted to turn and tell the woman to let go of her, but it was easier said than done. The image of the clapboard house on Monarch Street had in fact caught her up in its little loop. It was like a short length of film, running round and round.

The door would open, Aunt Jessica would beckon and speak her three lines:

"Your papa's at the fire station. Come on in now, Tammy. Come on in now."

Then she'd beckon again and turn round to step back into the house. The door would close. The dappled sunlight, falling through the branches of the old sycamore just to the right of number 38 Monarch Street, would move a little as a gust of summer wind passed through its huge, heavy branches. Then, after a beat, the door would open once again, and Auntie Jessica would reappear on the stoop with exactly the same smile on her face, exactly the same lines to speak.

"Look away," Maxine said again, this time more urgently.

The urgency got through to Tammy. Maybe I should do as she says, she thought; maybe this little picture-show isn't as innocent as it seems. Maybe I'm going to be stuck in this loop with the door and Jessica and the shadows coming through the sycamore forever.

A little spasm of panic rose in her. She made a conscious effort to avert her eyes, thinking of what Todd had said. But her mind's eye had become glued to the scene the angel had conjured, and she couldn't shake herself free of it. She forced herself to close her eyes but the loop was still there behind her eyelids. Indeed it carried more force there because it had nothing to compete with. She began to shake.

"Help me . . ." she murmured to Maxine.

But there was no answer forthcoming.

"Maxine?"

There were beads of brightness in the image she could see in her mind's eye, and they were getting stronger. In spite of her panicked state, Tammy didn't have any difficulty figuring out what they signified. The angel was getting closer to her. It was using the cover of the looped memory to approach her, until she was within reach of it.

"Maxine!" she yelled. "Where the hell are you?"

In her mind's eye, the green door on Monarch Street was opening for perhaps the eleventh or twelfth time: smiling Aunt Jessica appearing to beckon and speak—

"Maxine?"

"Your papa's at the fire station—"

"Maxine!"

She'd gone; that was the bitter truth of it. Seeing the angel approaching, and unable to pull Tammy out of its path, she'd done the sensible, self-protecting thing. She'd retreated.

The light in the scene on Monarch Street was getting brighter with every passing moment. She could feel its corrosive energies on her skin. What would the angel's luminescence do to her if it touched her? Cook her marrow in her bones? Boil away all her blood? Oh, God in Heaven. This wasn't a game: it was life or death. She had to find something to break the loop, before the light of the angelic projector got so hot it cremated her.

There was to be no help from Maxine, that was clear; so she was left with Todd. Where had he been the last time she'd seen him? Her thoughts were now so chaotic she couldn't even remember that.

No, wait; he'd been upstairs, hadn't he? She couldn't picture him (the loop was too demanding, the brightness too sickeningly strong: it overwhelmed every other image in her head, real or imagined) but she remembered that he'd been up in the master bedroom.

Oh, and he'd been naked. She remembered that too. Todd the naked ghost, slapping his hard dick around as though it were a toy that he'd suddenly discovered was unbreakable. For a moment the image of Jessica on the doorstep juddered, as though the sprockets had become caught in the gate for a moment. Her mind had found a tool to thrust into the mechanism. Actually, Todd's tool, bobbing at his groin, giving her its slit-eyed gaze.

Yes! She could almost see it—

Aunt Jessica's smiling image juddered a second time, then the brightness behind the picture started to press through her eyes, burning away the pupils, making her look momentarily demonic.

"Yoyo yoyo you-your-Papas-as-as-as-atat-atat-atat-the-the-the-the—"

The woman was jerking round like a puppet being manipulated by someone in the early stages of a grand mal. The loop flipped back, and she was beckoning again, with the first syllable of her speech caught on her tongue.

Tammy ignored it. She had Todd's beautiful rod in her mind's eye, and it was strong enough to break the angel's back.

"Go away" she told Aunt Jessica.

"Yo-yo-yo-yo—"

"I said: Go away!"

There it was now: Todd's erection, clear as day. She made an intellectual assessment of it, to give solidity to the memory. It was a good eight inches long, circumcised, with a slight left-hand drift.

The light behind Aunt Jessica grew blindingly bright, burning away not only the old lady's figure, but the stoop and the summer tree. The image of Todd's manhood was getting stronger all the time, as though Tammy's pulse beats were feeding it blood; fattening it, glorifying it.

The angel's brilliance still made her skin itch, but she had the better of it now. Two, three more seconds and Monarch Street had disappeared completely, overtaken by the image of Todd's manhood.

"Maxine!" she yelled again.

There was still no reply. She put her head down, so when she opened her eyes she would be staring at the ground, not at the angel's light. She half-expected to see Maxine sprawled on the ground at her feet, overcome by the angel's power. But no. There was nothing below her but the cracked pathway that led from the front door.

She turned on her heel and lifted her gaze a little. The front door was open; the light the angel shed washed the entire scene before her, taking its color out, and throwing Tammy's shadow up against the wall.

She felt a perverse imperative to glance back over her shoulder; to put the weapon she'd summoned to the test one more time. But she turned herself away from such nonsense, and stumbled back the way she and Maxine had come just a little while before.

Even before she reached the steps she heard Maxine sobbing inside. Enraged that she'd been left to face the enemy alone, but at least grateful that Maxine was alive, she climbed the steps, pushed the cracked front door closed as far as it would go, and went back into the house.

Maxine was sitting on the stairs, shaking.

On the floor above, Todd had just emerged from the master bedroom. He'd put on the jeans Tammy had fetched for him, and he was carrying a large gun.

"It won't do you any good," Tammy said, slamming the door behind her.

"I'm sorry," Maxine said. "I left you out there."

"So I noticed."

"I was yelling for you to come, but you wouldn't move. And that thing was just getting closer and closer."

"It wants me. It doesn't want you two."

"Well then," Tammy said, staring at the front of Todd's straining jeans and giving up a silent prayer to the efficacy of their contents. "We have two options. We either give you to the angel, and let it take you wherever the hell it intends to take you—"

"Oh God no. Please. I don't want to go with that thing. I'd rather die."

"Stop waving the gun around and listen to me, Todd. I said we had two options."

"What's the other one?"

"We make a run for it."